vintage typewriters

Please visit Suzanne at Colorado Lady for more Vintage Thingie Thursday fun!

This week I'm sharing my mom's typewriters for Vintage Thingie Thursday.  These got lots of use! My parents were self-employed and my mom did all the typing of letters and other miscellaneous business forms and correspondence on these for many many years, until they got an IBM Selectric.

Christmas in um, June

Wednesday is Rednesday at It's A Very Cherry World.  
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This week I'm sharing some Christmas stuff of my mom's. I do so apologize, I know what a shock to the system it must be to hear mere mention of Christmas in June!  Please forgive me.

I found spools of thread and other sewing notions in this darling box - as much as I love vintage sewing stuff, it's the box I adore.

My mom made this funny stuffed Christmas tree years and years ago and never quite finished it. I found the "strawberries" (not quite sure why there are strawberries on the tree???) pinned to the edges of the tree. 

My favorite thing is this wall hanging my mom embroidered using iron-on patterns.  

And lastly, at the bottom of the following photo, you will see some of the holiday window stencils that we had when I was a child. Gave me the giggles to find them.

the sun is shining ...

the sun is shining
the weather is sweet

make you want to move your dancing feet
~ bob marley

Yippie! It's summer!  Today is the husbands last day of school WAHOO!  Time for summer vacation.

The sun is not cooperating here ... stinking So. Cal. June Gloom.  Bah humbug.  Oh well, my spirit is light and bright and I'm looking forward to movies and museums and and and lots of fun stuff.  Hoping to hit the Santa Monica Farmers Market every week for two months, would love that. 

The hubs wants to go to the new CARS land at Disneyland/California Adventure but I just read that the line on the new rides are taking up to five and a half hours. FIVE AND A HALF HOURS. How does one stand in line for that long and not go insane?!  Alas, not my kind of thing ... at all.

Thinking lots about crafting over here ... my youngest nieces birthday is next Friday so some celebratory homemade whatsit for her is on my list ... I hope to get some 4th of July cards made ... and I'm hoping to get going on my stitching project after a trip to the needlework store tomorrow.

I found this vintage red white and blue ribbon in my grandmother's things and the funny Blue Chip Stamps and the wonderful vintage photo, in my mom's things.

The darling girl holding the flag in the photo, keeps appearing in my mother's family photos. I have no idea who she is???  I'm guessing she must be a cousin of my mom's, but so far none of the photos bear a name on them.  It's so sad to not know the stories of all these people.

She is my muse and 4th of July inspiration this year.

feeling stitchy

The itch to stitch has been getting stronger and stronger of late.  It's been so long and I feel so very rusty and anxious.  I've been entertaining the idea of making something for my living room and last night the urge to begin overcame me. 

In the poor evening light of my den, I picked what I hoped might go with my living room colors.  After breakfast this morning I gathered up the possible skeins and put them against my living room chair.  My eye caught my pincushion that lives in my curio cabinet with my little treasures. 

I found it at Heart's Ease in Cambria, California long ago.  Heart's Ease was originally owned by the wonderful author, illustrator, gardener, Sharon Lovejoy. You can read Sharon's blog here.

Happy Stitching!

a vintage picnic

Wednesday is Rednesday at It's A Very Cherry World.  

Please join Sue for more Rednesday fun!

Thursday is Vintage Thingie Thursday at Colorado Lady.
Please join Suzanne for more VTT fun!

More goodies found at my parents house ... a vintage thermos, ice chest and tablecloth ... just in time for a start of summer picnic! 

I'm guessing the ice chest is something like circa 1920 since the label reads "Muckle MFG. Co., Owatonna, Minnesota" and my grandparents left Minnesota around that time???  Or did it belong to their parents? 

Haven't a clue about the thermos (or what we now call a "thermos") ... the thermos cap reads "Plastones, Hot 'N' Cold". 

The tablecloth was my mother's ... I found several like this at the house. I know there are some tablecloth experts out there - do you know if it is from the forties or the fifties? 

Happy summer picnic to you!

chocolatey joy with joy the baker

You're right, I just want to play today!  I did get my errands run and I did begin to go through more paperwork and stuff. 

I must have OCD because I had four ... FOUR ... file box size boxes of recipes I've clipped out and accumulated over the years, all sorted and categorized blah blah blah. FOUR!  Now that's focused and determined and diligent, huh?!  Good grief. Thankfully it finally hit me ... walloped me ... that I don't need to keep those four boxes, that I could get rid of them. 

VOILA!  Four whole boxes lighter ...

... right?!  

Wrong.

I just had to look at all these wonderful sounding recipes and great photos and of course the "Oh, I'll only keep a few recipes" pile, keeps growing. 

Anyway, as I was going through the last of the saved recipes after lunch, I found this article ("Warm chocolate cake, no sharing") about adorable blogger, Joy the Baker, in the February 2012 issue of Sunset Magazine.  With a recipe ("Single-girl melty chocolate peanut butter cake") for an individual serving of one of those molten chocolate cake thingies.  

If you know me, you know there's little in life that I love more than chocolate ... my husband, my dog and chocolate. My life in a nutshell ... er, cocoa bean.  

I'm so sad these days as I'm trying to not eat dessert during the week anymore since the old lady heftage has crept up on me.  Can you tell what's coming next?  I know you can!  

Being a good blogger and chocolate enabler, I knew photos were required.  I removed it at ten minutes as Joy told me I should do for a "molten" center.  YUM!  But I didn't like the look of the bubbles in my photo ... although yummy looking, not blog worthy ahhahhahhahaha!

So I sifted some powder sugar over it to hide my bubbles ... did I fool you?  Looks pretty tasty, huh?

You may want to avert your eyes for this next bit ...  ACK!

 

And then I remembered that she had taken hers out of the ramekin ... soooooo ... I tipped my MOLTEN hot custard cup, filled with MOLTEN hot chocolate and it was so hot (through TWO potholders!) that I dropped the cup into the pool of chocolatey yumminess.  WAHHHHHHHHHHH!  I see she used a nice straight sided ramekin, which I don't own ... wonder if that would have made a difference, could I have gotten a better grip on one of those?  Or was I just too eager?  

Anyway, it was GOOD.  Good chocolatey times.  You can find the recipe here. 

rockabye

vintage ceramic cradle
vintage baby booklet
vintage wallpaper
not vintage, sunbonnet sue dollhouse rug

canisters

Some vintage cutie canisters of my mom's - I know you guys love canisters.  My mom loved loved loved yellow. I probably won't end up  keeping them (WAH!), there's no room in my kitchen & they don't really go with it anyway, as much as I keep trying to figure out a way that they would. 

Our house is bursting at the seams with STUFF.  I'm at the "everything must go" point, I am so tired of going through boxes and the accompanying chaos of it all ... so bad for one's sanity. And goodness knows, I'm walking that fine line as it is hahahhahhaha.  And I don't want to pay for a storage space - that's like the never ending story ... once it enters, it's in for life. 

So I'm working on my "letting go" skills ... and not doing so well.  I keep opening boxes, determined that the contents will be off to Good Will and then I can't do it - keep thinking, OH! that's fun, I need to keep that.  and that. and that. 

Anyway ... so these may be up for grabs down the road on my Etsy or Ebay too ... if I have any sense at all ...

 

I am such an idiot - they were so dirty, I tried to wipe them off ... nothin' doin'!!!  So I put them in the sink and washed them.  They appeared hunky dory and much the better for it, until I noticed this one - I'm not sure if it wasn't like that when I started or not - I'm pretty sure that it's all my fault.  I am kicking myself to the moon and back.  They survived all these years and I get my hands on them for one moment and this happens.  sniffle sniffle SOB ...

  (1972 promotional booklet from Good Seasons)

vintage fabric

edited to add: Fabric piece is four yards long by 44 or 45 inches wide. The print motif is approximately 14 inches tall. The fabric is a printed linen (or linen-like) fabric. It is in excellent pristine condition. I could not find a manufactures name on the selvedge edge.

For those of you that are recent followers, you may not know the reason I am posting all this vintage stuff and perhaps are wondering where it's all coming from.  My father passed away last year and seemingly neither of my parents threw much away.  I've been going through fifty years + of my families things for the past year and sharing some of the fun stuff here.

I was so sad to find that all of my mom's calico quilt fabrics were gone, I always assumed it would be there when I was ready - I am guessing my father must have given it to his housekeeper. My dad would sometimes give her things for her church rummage sales.  (Much sadder, I was never able to find the quilt she had begun making for me WAH!)

But I did find this adorable fabric, probably from the early 70s, judging by the colors and motif? Isn't it fun?! The print is HUGE. I wonder what on earth my mom planned to make?

I'm wondering about selling it? Does anyone sell vintage fabric on Etsy or Ebay?  I haven't measured yet but I'm guessing there's about five or six yards.  Anybody have an idea what I should list it for?

Thank you!

three and four

 

Presenting numbers three and four of this years tomato endeavor ... the shameless husband ate poor one and two before the thought occurred to me to grab a photo of our first ones this year.  hahahhahha

We had some lettuce growing but some uninvited guest ate it down to the ground, kept coming back for another nosh, until it was all gone ... ate it perfectly, each time leaving all the lettuce plants the exact same height.  Is that an animal or a snail???

What's growing in your garden?

Stamp Collecting on Vintage Thingie Thursday

Please join the vintage fun with Suzanne at Colorado Lady!

This week I'm sharing some fun stamp collecting stuff I found that belonged to my brother when he was a child. 

Here's some nifty First Day Covers from 1957 and 1958.  

I found this fun kit from Nestle, dated 1958 - complete with the cutest little plastic magnifying glass, photo hinges and stamps.  It was one of those promotional items where you sent in labels and received merchandise for a small amount.  We sure loved our Nestle's Quick at our house so one label was easy peasy for us to come up with.

I even found the booklet with the offer and order form in it, so much fun!  Send today for this sensational offer! $1.50 value for only $0.50!  Powerful stamp magnifier. hahhahahahhaha

Oh look! They tell us what a "Nestle label unit is" on the left hand side.
We would have had to send in "one lid or label tracing from any size Quick".

A hobby for the whole family

Then it has a comic and "the true story behind the stamp"

The stamp album is in excellent mint shape, with not a single stamp placed inside - 

I'm guessing my uber stamp collecting mother must have been the instigator of this hobby!